A medicine dispensing device (or medicine distributor) installed in a pharmacy or the like dispenses medicines separately for each prescription by filling, into each of predetermined containers called vial bottles (an example of the dispensing container), a medicine of a kind and in an amount corresponding to contents of a medicine prescription for each of patients, from each of a plurality of medicine cassettes (an example of the medicine receiving container) which are containers each receiving a specific medicine (mainly tablet). The vial bottle filled with the medicines as described above is provided to the patient. Further, the medicine dispensing device of this type normally has an information recording function for recording, on the vial bottle, various kinds of information related to the medicine prescription when the medicine is filled into the vial bottle. In general, the information recording function is a function of recording information related to the medicine prescription onto a label and affixing the label to the vial bottle. On the label, in addition to character information indicating name, usage, etc. of a medicine, information for identifying the medicine prescription (prescription identification information) is recorded as a barcode or the like.
Meanwhile, in a pharmacy or the like in the United States, in a case of providing the medicine prescribed for the patient, there is performed such an operation in which, upon an appointment of picking up the medicine made by the patient to whom the medicine is prescribed, reception of a prescription issued by a doctor, or the like, the medicines corresponding to the medicine prescription are filled into the vial bottle in advance, and after that, the vial bottle is handed over (provided) when the patient appears to pick up the medicine. Hereinafter, this operation is referred to as prior dispensing.
In a case where, although the prior dispensing is performed, the patient does not appear to pick up the medicine (vial bottle) within a predetermined period of time, in order to prevent the medicine from being wasted, the medicine is recovered from the vial bottle to the original medicine cassette. Hereinafter, this operation is called medicine recovery. Especially in the United States, the medicine recovery is performed frequently.
In the medicine recovery, erroneous selection of the medicine cassette to which the medicine is to be recovered leads to medical accidents. Accordingly, it is extremely important that the medicine be recovered to the correct medicine cassette. However, in a busy medical site, it is difficult to expect prevention of errors in the medicine recovery operation depending only on attentiveness of humans.
On the other hand, Patent Document 1 discloses a technology by which, when a medicine cassette (cell 12) is replenished with a medicine from a container (container 45) containing the medicine to be replenished, indicium such as barcodes recorded on a replenishing container and the medicine cassette are read by a barcode reader or the like. From comparison between both the indicium, it is determined whether or not the medicine in the replenishing container and the medicine in the medicine cassette coincide with each other. When the replenishing container in this technology is replaced with the vial bottle for application, this may contribute to prevention of errors in the medicine recovery operation.
Patent Document 1: JP 11-513954 A